17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, May 13, 1912: Ma got my dress on the go at last and I’ll keep at her until she gets it made.
Source: Ladies Home Journal (June, 1912)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Hmm . . This entry obviously is referring to the second dress that was mentioned in previous entries. (It’s not the Indian linen one that a seamstress finished).
Was the plan always for Grandma’s mother to make this second dress or had Grandma originally expected to make it herself?
On May 8, she’d written:
Did some sewing this afternoon. I have so many things to fix over and a dress I want to get made, but it is slow about getting there.
When I look at pictures of dresses from a hundred years ago they look like they would be complex to make. Maybe Grandma and her mother reached consensus that her mother could more skillfully do the sewing task.
Filed under: Fashion Tagged: | 1912, family history, genealogy, hundred years ago
When I was young, my mother and I would sew together, which is how I learned how to sew, and how my auntie taught my mum how to sew. Perhaps it was a joint project.
You’re probably right. Joint projects are the most fun–and people can teach other new skills.
Can you imagine sewing all your clothes? Being so self-sufficient? This one looks very smart.
It was a different time.
It surely seemed to me to be able to get more done in our hours years ago than we can now-a-days. I used to make a great deal of my clothes and even did some simple tayloring…. There was time to cook complicated meals, and time to keep things clean without all the chemicals. I think we have too many demands on us now with many too many distractions. Times certainly were different then.
I find myself still occasionally relying on my mom to help with sewing projects that I never quite acquired the finesse to finish.
You’re so fortunate! I wish that I’d paid more attention when my mother used to try to teach me how to do sewing projects. At the time I wasn’t into “homemade” dresses.
[...] May 13: Ma got my dress on the go at last and I’ll keep at her until she gets it made. [...]